2 ms·
It doesn’t exactly “generate” nuclear waste. The fuel is extracted from nature, not “generated”, and the spent fuel is mostly just the same thing with slightly
by AmericanChopper 3y ago
It doesn’t exactly “generate” nuclear waste. The fuel is extracted from nature, not “generated”, and the spent fuel is mostly just the same thing with slightly less fissile isotopes in it.
- DennisP 3y agoPartly true. The bulk of the waste is just U238, which isn't really dangerous. However, instead of the U235 there are unstable fission products, left over after heavy atoms split. They provide most of the radioactivity for the first century or two. There's also plutonium, formed when U238 absorbs a neutron without fissioning, and other transuranics formed in similar ways. The transuranics make up most of the long-term radioactivity. (This is an appealing thing about fast reactors; they fission more of the transuranics so only the fission products are left, and overall you're back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple centuries.)
- philipkglass 3y agoFreshly discharged spent fuel is many orders of magnitude more radioactive than the source material because of the fission products generated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission_product That's also why an explosive breach of an operating reactor, like at Chernobyl, is far more dangerous than an explosive accident at a uranium mining site. The danger of radioactive materials is inversely proportional to their half-lives, so acute danger from fission products lasts only a few centuries. But it's pretty important to contain those fission products until said centuries have passed.